The 9 worst predictions about Trump’s rise to the top

Long before Donald Trump descended the grand escalator at Trump Tower to declare his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination last June, conservative pundits and nonpartisan clairvoyants alike had laughed off the possibility of the real-estate mogul turned reality TV star ascending to the party’s pinnacle, joining the ranks of Ronald Reagan, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. (And, to be fair, Mitt Romney, Alf Landon and John C. Frémont.)

And for months, as Trump gained droves of followers and delegates, their laughter continued.

They’re not laughing Wednesday.

Hours after Trump routed his rivals in Indiana and all but sewed up the Republican nomination, party stalwarts and conservatives long opposed to Trump are coming to grips with the reality of the Manhattan magnate leading their party in the fall.

Here are a few predictions that, in hindsight, do not look as great as they once seemed:

“Taking into account name recognition, Trump’s net favorability rating (favorable minus unfavorable) of minus-32 percentage points stands out for its pure terribleness at this point in the campaign. Like his unfavorable rating, it is by far the worst of the 106 presidential candidates since 1980 who are in our database,” Harry Enten wrote for FiveThirtyEight on June 16, 2015, the day Trump declared himself a candidate.

The article featured a chart averaging polls that suggested Trump as the most hated Republican candidate among party members.

“For this reason alone, Trump has a better chance of cameoing in another ‘Home Alone’ movie with Macaulay Culkin — or playing in the NBA Finals — than winning the Republican nomination,” Enten wrote.

Because he’s ‘not really a Republican’

Prognosticator Nate Silver remarked in mid-September that Trump would not be the nominee because he is “not really a Republican.”

“He’s very far to the right on immigration, but he also wants socialized medicine,” Silver said, according to Business Insider’s account. “He wants to tax the rich, right? There’s an alternate reality in which he decided to run as a Democrat instead — he wouldn’t have to change his policy positions all that much.”

Silver also downplayed the importance of early polls, saying, “Calm down — it’s not a tennis match where you’re going back and forth all the time.”

Because he’ll be out by Iowa

Former Mitt Romney adviser and noted Trump critic Stuart Stevens took to CNN onOct. 5 to boldly predict that the candidate would begin to falter in the polls and drop out of the race before a single vote was cast in the Iowa caucuses.

In the midst of college football season, Stevens responded to a question on which school Trump would represent in the Republican field by calling the tycoon’s campaign “Division III with a really trash-talking coach who says he’s going to take on and win the national championship even though they’re Division III but hasn’t won a game yet.

“I don’t think he’s going to be on the ballot by Feb. 1,” Stevens declared.

Because he ‘seriously’ won’t win

As Trump cemented his place as the party’s front-runner in mid-October, Bloomberg View columnist Jonathan Bernstein dismissed pundits who said that the insurgent candidate’s stock was rising.

“It’s true that Trump continues to maintain a comfortable lead in national polling — about 10 percentage points ahead of Ben Carson, and another 10 or more over the rest of the field. He’s probably still on top in Iowa, too, although Carson is close there. Despite that, nothing so far tells us that Trump has any serious chance of being the Republican nominee,” he wrote.

While acknowledging that his past prediction that Trump would drop out at the first sign of trouble had not come to pass, Bernstein suggested “a slow fade leading to a weak finish in Iowa is possible.”

“Or his rankings could stay capped at the 25 percent to 30 percent range, and he will lose once the further winnowing of the candidates produces one or two strong opponents,” he concluded. “In short, everything we know about how presidential nominations work says Trump isn’t going to be the nominee, or even come close.”

Because everyone will laugh at you for thinking that Trump will win

“The entire commentariat is going to feel a little silly when Marco Rubio wins every Republican primary,” New York Times columnist Ross Douthat tweeted Sept. 25.

Because it’s going to be Marco Rubio

Douthat’s Oct. 24 piece opened with a reminder to readers that four years ago to that week, he correctly predicted that Mitt Romney would be the party’s nominee.

While remarking that the 2016 Republican field is “stronger overall” than 2012’s crop, Douthat invited readers to play a version of the same “elimination game this time around.”

“No major party has ever nominated a figure like Trump or Carson, and I don’t believe that the 2016 GOP. will be the first,” Douthat wrote, dismissing all other candidates for a variety of reasons.

Douthat cautioned that while he predicted Rubio would win, he did so “gingerly, not boldly, because Rubio is a very strange sort of front-runner. He has never led a national poll.”

And he never did.

Because he hasn’t been tested

Writing for The New York Times’ The Upshot blog on Dec. 15, Nate Cohn wrote of Trump’s appeal as a factional candidate, suggesting parallels to Howard Dean, Pat Buchanan and Herman Cain.

“But it’s still too soon to say Mr. Trump is the front-runner for the nomination,” Cohn added. “He has a high floor but a low ceiling, and although he has weathered many controversies, the toughest days are yet to come.”

Cohn pointed to Cruz’s lead in Iowa in a recent poll but also cautioned against drawing conclusions about Trump being the front-runner based on past polling volatility at that point in the cycle.

“Mr. Trump shares a lot in common with strong factional candidates who have ultimately fallen short in recent cycles,” Cohn postulated. “He does not have broad appeal throughout the party; he is unacceptable to the party’s establishment; and there are reasons to believe that his high numbers may be driven by unsustainable factors — like voters who are less likely to turn out or who are responding to pollsters with ‘Trump’ because they haven’t heard any other name for four months.”

Because I’ll leave the party

Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol long pushed for the formation of a third party or independent challenger to Trump as the mogul continued his meteoric rise before and during the primary process. By the winter solstice, Kristol was soliciting party names for “the new party we’ll have to start if Trump wins the GOP nomination.”

Speaking to ABC, where he is a contributor, Kristol deemed the tweet “semi-serious.”

“I don’t think Trump will be the nominee, so I don’t expect it to be an issue,” Kristol said. “But since I don’t think I could support Trump, and I’d like to have someone to vote for, if Trump were to be the nominee, I’d be open to a new party, probably for 2016 only — but you never know.”

Because he’s finally collapsing

“Pundits who underestimated Trump’s potential last autumn have been hesitant to come out and state what has now become apparent: He is probably not going to be the Republican nominee after all,” Jacob Weisberg wrote for Slate on April 8, three days after Cruz earned a temporary reprieve by trouncing Trump in Wisconsin.

He ticked through a series of Trump’s recent woes, including Corey Lewandowski being charged with battery for manhandling Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields, his remark that there should be punishment for women who have abortions (though Weisberg did not note that was in the context of the procedure being banned), as well as his refusal to take the use of nuclear weapons off the table in either Europe or the Middle East.

“Trump is now a wounded animal, and as hunters know, these can be the most dangerous kind. The Republican Party will have to use care in depriving him of a prize that he thinks belongs to him by rights,” Weisberg wrote of the-then burgeoning fight over delegates beyond the first ballot. “The best-case scenario for the GOP would be Trump facing facts and backing out of the primary before the Cleveland convention in mid-July.”